Street Names as Cusswords and Indefensible Stupidity

First, let me say a universal truth: Most men think they know what they are doing, and don’t. The worst thing you can do is add another man to this equation as it has multiplying effect on the resulting stupidity that invariably will occur.

Case in point: Three men, smart enough to make it into their thirties, each given a set of directions. Stop laughing, I haven’t gotten to the punch line. Now the directions give street names, which turns to make and the mileage at which to make the turns. Simple enough, you’d think.

And it seemed so. But when we were done, the 45 miles we were supposed to ride became a painful 63. We were rained on, stung by bees, dehydrated and famished, and altogether worn out.

It started out innocently enough. Three guys, Paul, John and myself, rode off ahead as we just liked to go faster. Not for any particular reason other than we just haven’t quite gotten the whole adrenaline rush thing out of our system. So, away from the pack we went, blissfully ignorant of what lied ahead.

And after Saturday, I have a new word for pain, and it is this: Bissel. Ok, it’s not very impressive, I agree. But should you take a trip in the winding roads of Basking Ridge, you just may come across a sign along a flat patch of land with fallow farm fields and winsome old homes dotting the hilltops. And then, slowly enough, your engine will start humming ever louder and those views will drop away as you start not looking across a landscape, but straight up its nose. And your engine will now become quite angry with you as slowly come to realize that you are now ascending a seemingly unrelenting hill.

For three miles we went up Bissel. (Bissel, it’s almost a swear word to me – ‘Aw, Bissel! That hurt!”) Halfway up, I had to use my inhaler. I haven’t had to use it for about five years. The TNT people didn’t even know I was asthmatic. That’s the kind of hill it was.

The kicker: it wasn’t until we got to the very top, where Bissel mercifully ended its torturously twisted existence, that we realized that we had gone the wrong way. And guess who was the navigator, who guided them up this Everest-esque ascent.

Yup, it was me. Eagle Scout, 36 merit badges (I think one of them was Orienteering. I may have to give that one back), two Bachelors degrees, and general know it all, etc. etc. John and Paul looked at me, and I could swear that they wondered if my body and bright orange bicycle could be hidden behind the rock wall at Bissel’s peak.

But I managed to bargain for my life (the price: a quite reasonable quesadilla, two diet Cokes and a pair of sandwiches at Lemon Lounge), and we got our bearings from a passing car, and kept going, thinking that would be the last of our straying from the directions.

It was not, and not by a long shot. It was at mile 41 of what was supposed to be a 45-mile ride that we realized the full extent of how deeply screwed we were. A mailman, who mercifully shared the water in his thermos with us (we were nearly out of water at that point), told us where we were – more than 12 miles from the finish. My legs tingled with exhaustion, the rationed Clif bar I had was gone, and I had far too little left in my Camelback and I looked at us, and each were bleary-eyed.

Even then, we botched the directions. Twelve miles, with a few missed turns ultimately became 22 miles. I honestly don’t know how we screwed that part up.

Somewhere in all this, it rained. I didn’t mind. It washed all the salt off my face and really complemented the state of collective misery we were in at that point. After the rain and after we nearly missed another turn, a bee decided I wasn’t uncomfortable enough and stung me.

When we, the Three Moroneteers, rolled in, one of the coaches called us the three stooges – and I tried to defend us, but when you are just that dumb, you just have to smile and take your lumps.

Five hours we weaved our clueless web across what seemed every road in three counties, and none of them were in the directions. And I can say that when we three sat on what seemed the most uncomfortable chairs invented at Lemon Lounge, that the food served was one of the best lunches I ever had.

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